“Being free from shame is a beautiful freedom”Corona is Bushra Rehman’s riveting first novel. The first sentence of the book begins by smashing assumptions; we think "Corona" and think alcoholic beverage. Well, I certainly do. But that’s not what Rehman is writing about. “Corona, and I’m not talking about the beer. I’m talking about a little village perched between under the number 7 train in Queens between Junction Boulevard and 111th St.” Corona is a close community in Queens, previou … [Read more...]

They're popping up everywhere in harmless-looking packaging: shame cartoons.A quick search online will turn up a multitude of articles, op-eds and full-on rants appealing to women's sense of shame (One particularly delightful article was titled "I appeal to your sense of shame my Muslim sister.")And then we have cartoons.The first kind are pretty straightforward: they want you to get veiled. But rather than engage you in discussions about interpretation of hadith or Qur'an, they try and … [Read more...]